"'Mining Mafia' Scandal Threatens Brazil’s COP30 Credibility as Police Uncover Massive Fraud", 24 September 2025

...The arrest of the director of Brazil’s National Mining Agency (ANM) and a senior official of the Brazilian Geological Survey (SGB), along with 20 others targeted by the Federal Police’s Operation Rejeito, has unleashed an unprecedented crisis in Brazil’s mining sector and prompted Congresswoman Duda Salabert (PDT-MG) to demand a Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI) on mining. The police investigation exposed a corruption and licensing fraud scheme worth hundreds of millions and potentially billions of dollars, reaching the highest levels of regulatory agencies and revealing what Salabert described as a “mining mafia” that has infiltrated all branches of governmental power...

“What the Federal Police revealed in Operation Rejeito are situations I have been denouncing for years, almost always as a solitary voice within Congress. The relationship between mining companies, lobbyists, and the government goes beyond immorality: it operates as a mafia infiltrated in all powers. It is regrettable that the country set to host the UN Climate Summit (COP30) in Belem has approved the so-called Devastation Bill, which opens even more loopholes for such crimes. Do we want to be a global reference in environmental protection? That will not happen as long as mining and other polluting corporations remain free of accountability,” Salabert said in a statement to Amazon Watch.

Also from Minas Gerais, Congresswoman Célia Xakriabá (PSOL-MG) demands that the investigations continue...

...For social movements resisting the destructive expansion of mining, these revelations confirm that such crimes are not exceptions but part of a structural pattern of state capture by private interests.

In a public letter released this week, the Volta Grande do Xingu Alliance, an international coalition of communities, organizations, and researchers, expressed its full support for the CPI and urged lawmakers to endorse Congresswoman Salabert’s request...

The Alliance’s warning refers to the Canadian company Belo Sun Mining, which aims to build the largest open-pit gold mine on the banks of the Volta Grande region of the Xingu River in Pará state. A court suspended the project’s license in 2017, citing failures in the consultation process with the Juruna and Arara Indigenous peoples...